Before becoming a scientific discipline, agroforestry was a form of peasant knowledge. Passed down from generation to generation, refined over centuries, this expertise has crossed continents before being recognised by international agronomic research as one of the most robust responses to contemporary agricultural challenges. This is its story.
I. The Origins: Millennial Practices Across All Continents
Pre-Columbian America
Long before the arrival of the conquistadors, Mesoamerican civilisations — the Maya, Aztecs, and Zapotecs — practised sophisticated forms of agroforestry. The milpa system, combining maize, beans and squash under tree cover, formed the basis of Mesoamerican agriculture for at least 3,000 years before our era. The Maya also cultivated forest gardens (pet kot) of remarkable complexity, combining fruit trees, medicinal plants, food crops and forest species across several vertical layers.
In the Andes, pre-Columbian civilisations developed agroforestry systems adapted to altitudinal zones, integrating Alnus acuminata (Andean alder) as a nitrogen-fixing tree in maize and potato cultivation.
Sub-Saharan Africa
In West Africa and the Sahel, the Zaï system and agroforestry parks of Faidherbia albida — a tree with remarkable phenological inversion properties — are emblematic examples of traditional agroforestry. The Faidherbia albida sheds its leaves during the rainy season (releasing light for crops) and regrows them in the dry season (providing shade and organic litter). This unique adaptation makes it an ideal companion for Sahelian cereal crops.
Southeast Asia
In Indonesia, forest gardens (kebun-talun in Java, tembawang in Kalimantan) represent agroforestry systems of exceptional biodiversity, combining hundreds of useful plant species on a single plot. These systems have profoundly influenced the scientific conceptualisation of modern agroforestry.
II. Scientific Formalisation: 1970-2000
The Birth of a Discipline
It was in the 1970s that agroforestry began to be formalised as a scientific discipline in its own right. The decisive turning point came in 1977, with the creation of the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF), today renamed World Agroforestry, based in Nairobi (Kenya). Canadian researcher J.G. Bene published that same year the founding report Trees, Food and People, which laid the conceptual foundations of modern agroforestry.
The Pioneering Role of CIRAD
In France, CIRAD (the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development), created in 1984, quickly became one of the major players in global agroforestry research. Its work on shade-grown coffee in Central America (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras) and Africa (Ethiopia, Cameroon) made it possible for the first time to quantify the agronomic, economic and environmental benefits of coffee agroforestry. These studies laid the scientific foundations of what we now call agroforestry specialty coffee.
The 1990s: Institutionalisation and International Recognition
The Rio Earth Summit (1992) placed sustainable land management at the heart of the international agenda. It was also in this decade that the first certifications valuing agroforestry practices were developed: Rainforest Alliance (1987, but massively deployed in the 1990s), Bird Friendly from the Smithsonian Institution (1997), and organic farming standards that progressively integrated agroforestry criteria.
III. Agroforestry in the Age of Climate Change: 2000 to Today
A Paradigm Shift
The turn of the 21st century coincided with an accelerated awareness of the effects of climate change on world agriculture. For coffee growing, projections are particularly concerning: climate models indicate that a significant proportion of current production zones will become unsuitable before 2050.
In this context, agroforestry shifted from a traditional practice marginalised by the green revolution to a recognised climate adaptation strategy funded by major international institutions — the World Bank, FAO, IFAD, and multilateral climate funds.
Research Advances
CIRAD intensified its research programmes in the 2000s-2020s, with major contributions:
- Precise quantification of carbon stocks in tropical agroforestry systems, feeding into REDD+ mechanisms
- Analysis of ecosystem services provided by coffee agroforestry systems in Central America
- Development of optimisation models for tree-coffee associations to simultaneously maximise coffee quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity
Agroforestry in European Agricultural Policies
In Europe, EU regulation No. 1305/2013 on rural development introduced for the first time specific financial support for agroforestry systems within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The 2023-2027 CAP reform strengthened these provisions with eco-schemes explicitly valuing the integration of trees on farms.
IV. Coffee Agroforestry: A Story Within a Story
From Wild Coffee to Shade-Grown Coffee
Coffea arabica is an understorey plant: in its natural habitat, the mountain forests of Ethiopia and Yemen, it grows in the shade of dense forest cover, between 1,200 and 2,200 metres altitude. The first Yemeni coffee gardens, the maqshama, were complex agroforestry systems combining coffee plants, fruit trees (fig, pomegranate, apricot) and aromatic plants.
The Break of the Green Revolution
From the 1970s onwards, many coffee-producing countries promoted the technification of coffee growing: replacing traditional shade varieties with high-yield dwarf varieties grown in full sun, with massive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. The coffee leaf rust catastrophe that devastated Central America in 2012-2013 is directly linked to this weakening of production systems.
The Return of Shade-Grown Coffee
Since the 2000s, there has been a movement of rehabilitation of shade-grown coffee, driven jointly by scientific research (CIRAD, CATIE, ICRAF), sustainability certifications and the rise of the specialty coffee movement. Today, coffees from certified agroforestry systems — Bird Friendly, Rainforest Alliance, Organic — represent a strongly growing segment of the global specialty coffee market.
Conclusion: A Story Still Being Written
The history of agroforestry is that of a millennial knowledge that nearly disappeared under 20th-century agricultural modernity, before being rehabilitated by science and the imperatives of climate change. It is also the story of a remarkable convergence between peasant tradition, cutting-edge agronomic research and the demands of the most informed consumers.
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Sources: CIRAD, FAO, ICRAF/World Agroforestry, Rainforest Alliance, Smithsonian Bird Friendly, SCA.
